Taken by Angeline Fortin (great books of all time TXT) 📗

in stark contrast to the white.  Laird, oh Laird, her heart cried.  I’m here.  I’m still waiting, too!

“’Boot time, lassie.  What kept ye?”

Scarlett’s head whipped around and she stared incredulously at Donell, who was leaning against a granite pillar not far away.

“What kept me?” she asked incredulously.  “What kept you?  I’ve been here almost every day for a month.”

She had.  Tyrone and her parents had wanted to make a media circus of her ‘kidnapping and disappearance’ as well as her miraculous return but Scarlett had told them that the paycheck was all dried up.  She refused to work for them and be the oh-so-marketable Scarlett Thomas product any longer.

Thankfully, Grayson would have nothing to do with her.  He’d finally gotten all the publicity he ever desired, though not in the best light.  It seemed he’d been a person of interest in drawn out investigation surrounding her disappearance.  CNN instead of Entertainment Tonight.  No one had believed his outrageous claims that she’d simply disappeared into thin air.

Even the press had given up on getting a word out of her on the matter but Scarlett had never given up on finding Donell, hiring private investigators to track him down and waiting him out herself at Dunskirk.

“Ye ken what I find surprising?” he continued, as if she hadn’t even spoken.  “Ye had no’ a tear in yer eye when ye left this place and found yerself in the past.  No’ a tear for what ye’d lost and yet here ye are in tears now.  Why is that?”

“I suspect you know why,” Scarlett said tartly, wiping her eyes.  “Stop playing with me, Donell. Are you here to send me back or not?”

“Tsk, tsk, lassie.  Ye’ve nae patience a’tall.”

“No, I don’t,” she agreed.  “Why couldn’t you just send him back here with me in the first place?  He was supposed to die on that field after all.  What harm would there have been in letting him come with me?”

Donell shook his head.  “That’s no’ the way it works, lass.  There was more for him to do.  A purpose.  ‘Tis the reason he was spared.”

“And what was the reason for sending me there?” she asked.  “To break my heart?”

“Is it broken?” he asked curiously.  “Or are yer tears because no one has ever cared so much for ye?”

“My tears aren’t because he cared for me, Donell.  My tears are because I have never been given the chance to care so much for someone else.  I would give anything for him.  For Rhys and the girls.”

“E’en if it meant staying here and being wi’out him forever?”

The thought was like a knife in the heart but Scarlett nodded without hesitation.  “If it meant keeping them safe.  Yes.  I would stay here.  Is that why you didn’t let me stay with him?”

Donell ambled toward the effigy, tracing his fingers across the marble.  “He was just sixty-six years when he died.  It wouldn’t have a been a verra long life ye had wi’ him in any case.”

Another tear splashed on her cheek as she looked down at the carefully hewn sculpture of Laird’s beloved face.  “A year would have been enough.  A week.  A day.  It wouldn’t have mattered.  I just wanted to live a life with him, no matter how long it ended up being.  He never knew that.  I never got the chance to tell him that I would have loved to have been his wife in truth.”  Her voice broke with emotion over those last words.

“Good answer, lass.”

Silence fell once again in the chapel as Scarlett gathered Laird’s plaid tightly around her shoulders and stared down at the tomb.  “So that’s it then?  I’m here and he’s safe?”  She sniffed and nodded decisively though her voice lacked the resolve, emerging in a choked whisper, “Okay, that’s okay then.”

Her chin trembled as her tears began falling in earnest as the agony of loss and heartbreak expanded in her heart with renewed energy.  “It’s okay, Laird.  You’re okay,” she whispered painfully as she spread her hand out over his, curling her fingers around the stone.  Imagining she could feel the warmth of his touch.  His hand in hers one last time.

One final touch.

“That’s all that really matters.  You’re good.  We’re good.”

“Och, lass.  Enough,” Donell said sharply, though a single tear glinted in the corner of his eye.  “Ye’ve nae hesitation do ye?  Is there nothing here at all that ye would miss?”

“Toilet paper.”

“Be serious.”

“The next season of Sherlock?  What do you want me to say, Donell?” she asked, shaking her head.  “None of it really matters in comparison.”

“What aboot this?” he asked, kicking a large box next to his foot.  A box she recognized all too well.

“Where did you get that?”

“Answer the question.”

Scarlett shrugged.  “It was for them.  It was all for them.  I just… I thought they might like it.”

“Ye cannae change their fate, lass.”

“No, I’ve mostly decided that fate isn’t so bad.  It gave me Laird.  Even for a little while,” she said, her eyes drawn irresistibly back to the tomb.

“Yet ye still came here hoping to change fate and find a way back.”

A sad smile quirked her lips.  “I did say ‘mostly’.”

“Ye’d fight for him.”

“I would.  Every girl should be so lucky as to be taken by a Laird.”

Donell nodded with open satisfaction.  “Then go fight for him, lass.”

Darkness swirled around the corners of her vision then the world went black.  By bits and pieces, light began to pierce the gloom once again.  Here.  There.  Little haloed flames.  Candles.

Set along the wall of the chapel were thousands of little candles, brightening the space and reflecting off golden grill work along the perimeter of the room, gold paint on the details of the murals covering the ceiling and the gold of the plate and goblet laid out on the altar.

It also shone of the dark hair of the man kneeling there, his head bent in prayer.  Tears began to roll down her cheeks again, this time in thanks, as she looked heavenward.  She was back!

Though